


Another Glorious Day

by Supertights



Category: Aliens (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Ellen Ripley/Dwayne Hicks, Dubious Science, F/M, Families of Choice, Gen, Minor Appearance by Dwayne Hicks, Minor Appearance by Jones, Minor Appearance by Rebecca Jorden, Misses Clause Challenge, Original Character(s), POV Female Character, Yuletide 2016, original non-human character - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:43:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supertights/pseuds/Supertights
Summary: In an alternate universe, Ripley made a slight detour on the way home.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AuKestrel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuKestrel/gifts).



> Thank you to my beta reader, karanguni, who is full of great patience, endless kindness, and good humour.

Ellen Ripley closed the hypersleep chamber and rested a hand on the plexiglass for a moment, staring at the sleeping man within. He’d surprised her, Corporal Dwayne Hicks with his unexpected kindnesses and unwavering respect of her courage. They’d doubted her and her bugs in that first roll out; all of the marines had doubted. Even Hicks had, at first. And while he hadn’t been there to help in the end, he’d given her tools that had served her well in the battle with the Queen. So many dead due to greed.

She missed her dead daughter, she missed Earth, and she missed Jones.

Newt tugged on Ripley’s shirt; the young girl had been standing quietly next to her, eyes curious about the delay in entering hypersleep.

“Ready?” asked Ripley, knowing how hard it was to sleep the sleep of innocents after all that they had seen.

Newt nodded sharply. “A-ffirmative.” A brief flash of grief for the dead marine she’d picked the line up from and then it was gone. Newt gave herself no room for excess baggage on the trip home. Loss was for losers.

Ripley led the girl to her chamber and waited for her climb in and settle. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” she said. “We’ll have a big breakfast. What would you like?”

After taking a moment to think about it, Newt said, “Pancakes. Lots of syrup. Lots of butter.”

“A-ffirmative,” said Ripley as she closed the cover. She held Newt’s gaze until the girl’s eyes closed.

Bishop watched her from his open chamber. He didn’t speak;he had already lost too much vital fluids. There hadn’t been much in the stores to keep him functioning. He nodded and she closed his chamber too.

She wandered the empty ship for a time, comfortable in her solitude. A last cup of coffee, then she joined her comrades in sleep.

 

The ship roused Ripley from hypersleep and she sat up, confused for a moment. Had it truly been three weeks, the length of time for the journey home? She checked a chrono and it had been a barely a week since leaving LV-426.

Ripley opened Bishop’s chamber and he activated with confusion. “What?” he mumbled through the thick biofluid bubbling from his mouth.

“The ship woke me up and I need to find out why. Keep an eye on Newt and Hicks, call me if there’s a problem.” She located and left a comm with him, tapping the button into the on position.

Ripley grabbed some fatigues from a locker; she didn’t know who they belonged to but they were a good length on long legs so most likely one of the men. Moving forward through the Sulaco, she found the almost redundant flight deck. The pilot and navigator seats waited, empty, the place a ghost ship in more ways than the obvious ones. She sat in the pilot’s seat and opened a dialogue with the ship’s AI.

 

Bishop looked up, bleary eyed, when Ellen Ripley returned dragging a lot of cabling behind her.

“The ship received new orders and stopped to change flight paths but didn’t wake me until we were two days out,” said Ripley matter of factly. “We’ve been diverted to a research space station not far from here that technically doesn’t exist on any map I could find in the database. It’s got an infestation-type problem that cannot be described in the brief due to the classified nature of the research, but there was a tag: Bug Hunt. Our orders will follow when we arrive. I’m not sure any of our previous communications made it back to Earth because the orders call for a squad of marines, which clearly we are not. Do you want the good news or bad news first?”

The bad news involved having the cables and fluids that Ripley had located in the cargo hold being plugged and pumped into his android body (the functioning half anyway) so that he could communicate with the ship AI and get more information. He had to talk her through each step, each connection, and then suffer the expanding awareness alongside the inevitable shutdown of each damaged sector of his body until only his processing and facial motors were working although sporadically his fingers would twitch and clench. He reclined in his open pod, cables streaming out of his lower body like a mass of tentacles, and closed his eyes, allowing data to stream through his consciousness.

“The station is called Pandora,” he said softly, bypassing his humanoid lips in favour of using the vocalizer in his throat. The words took on a slightly sinister mechanical  tone that he couldn’t help.

“Well, that’s not foreboding at all...” muttered Ripley, smoking a cigarette from a half-empty  packet she’d found in Hudson’s locker.

“The station is in geosynchronous orbit above the planet LV-735. The station staff call the planet Zeus; it’s sharing space with two moons, one large, one small,” continued Bishop, not  replying to her comment.

“Give me something useful, Bishop.” She stubbed out the cigarette and walked back to the kitchen. The coffee was finally hot so she poured a cup, drinking it immediately and then pouring a second to carry back to the sleep chambers.

Ripley paused for a moment to check Newt and Hicks. She wouldn’t allow any further harm to come to either if it was in her purview.

“Their vital signs are nominal,” said Bishop, his face turned towards her. “Do you want me to wake them?”

“No,” she said, sharper than she’d have liked. “No, let them sleep. Tell me more about this space station.” She refused to call it Pandora. Someone had named it that for a reason, someone with a stark sense of humour.

“As I was saying, Pandora lies approximately four hundred kilometers above the planet Zeus with two moons orbiting at further out at two hundred fifty and five sixty thousand kilometers respectively called A1 and H2. There are no oceans or liquid water of any kind on Zeus although there are polar ice caps at the magnetic north and south of the planet. A terraforming plant has been in operation for the last four years near the colony of Pandora South; it’s the only human settlement on the planet and lies on the equator. The space station is colloquially called Pandora North.” Bishop began focusing in on more relevant data. “This military vessel was the closest when the red flag went up.”

“God save us from people with no brains and a sense of humor,” said Ripley. “How many on the station and how many more in the colony?”

“The station has a permanent scientific staff of seven with a support staff of fifty-four. The colony is manned by a team of managers, engineers, support and maintenance crew, a number with families, totalling seventy-three. It’s not a sizable colony yet.” He wanted to cough away the trickle in his throat but recognised it was a programmed behaviour and resisted. “They’re still recruiting families.”

“So it’s Company owned?” Like  that was even a question; the Company owned everything. Fucking Weyland-Yutani were into everything that made a profit. “Okay, dumb question. I’m going to have a shower and eat something, call me if shit happens.”

“Okay,” he replied, fingers twitching in a weak wave.

 

The steaming spray of water was a luxury; cleaning the stink of LV-426 off her before she got the stink LV-735 on felt pretty good. Ripley put her fatigues back on and searched Vasquez’s locker in the hope that the dead woman’s boots were a close match to her size. hey weren’t.  She tried Ferro’s and then Dietrich’s, the last woman’s proving the best fit. They only pinched slightly on her pinky toes. She got more coffee and returned to see what Bishop might’ve learned. “I’ll need a complete inventory of what weaponry is left and what medical supplies I have access to. And is there anything new?”

“The beacon is still transmitting a distress call. It hasn’t changed in any respect since it began broadcasting two weeks ago.” Bishop looked at her. “The colony dropped out ten days ago, no communication in or out.”

“A lot can happen in ten days,” said Ripley, lighting another cigarette. “When do we arrive?” She leaned against Hick’s sleep chamber.

“The Sulaco indicates an  arrival time sometime in the next twelve hours.”

“What I wouldn’t give for a fresh squad of jarheads,” she murmured, pushing up to stand beside the android. “I’m going to prep the drop ship with everything I can use to kill bugs and maybe a few things that won’t but that might slow them down.”

“Copy that,” replied Bishop with a slight smile. “Try to sleep as well, you might not get a chance when we arrive at the station.”

“Copy that.” She gave him a jaunty salute on her way out the door.

 

The cargo handling - moving extremely explosive explosives - was routine. Rack ‘em and stack ‘em stuff. More guns than she’d need, more grenades, more gas canisters and flame throwers. She reviewed her arsenal, then said “Not enough” and went to look for more. When she’d done all she could in six hours, Ripley checked the exterior of the drop ship in case they’d taken damage either during their escape from the plant or then later from their hitchhiker. The huge mother alien had been on board for no more than ten minutes - maybe fifteen at most - but Ripley was paranoid about finding an egg. A single egg meant they were all dead. She walked the entire cargo bay and searched everywhere one might even possibly have been laid. She even pulled a pair of binocs out of storage and checked the ceiling inch by inch.

The only place she couldn’t check was the exterior of the ship. There might be something on the hull of the Sulaco, but she’d never know.

“Bish, could the ship computer tell if something’s stuck on the exterior hull? Like a mine?”

He looked at her for a moment. “I believe it can. I will ask it to begin scanning immediately. Do you believe the Queen had the time and opportunity to lay eggs on the exterior?”

She shook her head, uncertain. “We have to be sure we don’t take any of its biological material back to Earth.’ She paused to think about what Bishop had called the alien. ‘Queen, that’s pretty fitting. But _bitch_ might be more accurate.”

“I concur. I have been working on freeing my programming from the Company. It’s hardwired deep into me, but with more than half of my physical needs removed, for lack of a better word.” He didn’t need to look at his missing lower half to get his point across. “I have enough operating power to put to the task.” His eyes seemed to lose focus. “I believe I want to be my own person, for however long it is left of my life.”

Ripley patted his shoulder. “You’re doing a bang up job already, I’d say. Let me know the results of the scan. I’m gonna get some shut eye.”

She slept in the seat on the dropship that Hicks had vacated when they’d arrived. It still smelt of burnt flesh, but she was out the moment her eyes fell closed.

 _“Ripley?”_ Bishop’s voice came over the comm system in the drop ship abruptly. _“Ripley, we have arrived and moved into a synchronous orbit with the space station.”_

She undid the harness holding her upright and stood up, flicking a switch to reply. “Is there exterior damage?”

 _“Negative. We have completed a scan of the station skin and are attempting to hack the system, so to speak. I might have told the Sulaco computer that it is highly likely that the station computer was compromised and we would need full control and access to all sections of the station.”_ His voice took on a slightly impressed tone. _“I do believe the ship just has succeeded.”_

“Way to go, Bishop. Do we have cameras inside?” Something, anything that might give her the edge.

_“We are getting images now. There are view screens in the crew lounge.”_

Ripley didn’t know why but she ran the whole way back, skidding to a stop in the lounge. Puffing a little, she made herself another coffee and sat on the edge of a table directly in front of the large bay of screens.

 _“Coming through now,”_ said Bishop as the screens lit and filled with grainy black and white images.

“Can you clean it up a bit?” she asked, counting the cigarettes left in her borrowed pack. She tucked it back into her pocket without lighting one.

The image on the screen sharpened and became lighter. _“Is that better, Ripley?”_

“Yes-- and no. Does that look like what I think it looks like?” Her frown deepened and her stomach lurched as she took in the makeshift barriers and bullet holes scattered across the long corridor walls. Sweat beaded on her forehead. “What were they doing out here?”

_“There are similarities. The staff would have sought safety in the research areas: they are highly reinforced and can lock down in microseconds. Those areas were breached sometime in the last forty-eight hours. There are no life signs on board the station and several of the escape pods have been launched towards the colony on the planet below.”_

“Well, shit.” She took a cigarette out and lit it with shaky hands. “Can you access the data from the station to see what exactly they were working on and what took out the crew?”

_“The station computer is damaged; what data there is is corrupted or completely lost. From what the Sulaco and I can cobble together, they were working on a highly malleable super virus that could be tasked with taking down alien populations independently. It would then theoretically self-destruct if it wasn’t killed outright in combat. That being said, it was seemingly destroyed in the first minutes of whatever went wrong so that it didn’t escape.”_

“Is the virus still on the station?”

 _“We’re not sure that it is the cause of the problem,”_ he reminded her. _“Viruses are highly resilient. I doubt they destroyed every sample. The Company wouldn’t have allowed it.”_

“Right.” She grabbed a few ration bars and carried them back to the locker room. She had prepared a combat harness with numerous pouches that were filled with items of value including a motion detector. Those had been very useful in the previous mission. Picking up the pulse rifle she’d left leaning against Hick’s locker, Ripley reflected that she had one more reason to thank him for the impromptu lesson on LV-426. “Is there breathable air?”

_“Yes, the environmental controls are still functioning, you will have air and heat. Purity tests show chemicals that would translate to smoke. Nothing like a chemical or biological weapon.”_

Bishop piloted the dropship over to the station; Ripley probably could have flown it if she needed to but he insisted, being a stickler for rules. _“Airlock now cycling,”_ he murmured over the comm.

She was already up and putting as much of her arsenal as she could fit onto her harness. Ripley might clank when she walked but she couldn’t be accused of not being prepared.

The door to the station’s exterior airlock opened and she blinked as she was both deafened and blinded. The station was typical of most Company facilities, industrial and stripped down. Claustrophobic.  Blinding flashes of red light and the endless howl of the emergency alarm only made it worse. “Bishop, shut down the emergency lights and sirens please.” Blessed silence descended seconds later. She stepped out of the drop ship and onto the grating that passed for flooring. “Thanks, Bishop.”

_“You’re welcome. I suggest starting in the research areas. Straight ahead five hundred yards then a right.”_

Riply stepped out of the airlock into a curved corridor and the door shut behind her. Moving slowly, the clicking of the motion detector attached to her pulse rifle was reassuring in a way, like a second heartbeat. There didn’t seem to be much damage to this area: no visible bullet holes; no scorch marks, claw marks, or acid for blood holes in the floors. Then Ripley turned right into what remained of a barricade.

The lighting fixtures along the entire corridor had been torn out and cascaded sparks along the floor. The walls were scorched and shot up, bullet holes. The were bodies as well, like she’d seen on the images they’d managed to pull. Ripley wasn’t used to seeing the dead outside of cocoons. “Bishop, there are bodies here.”

 _“Copy that.”_ There wasn’t much to say but he asked, _“Security or scientific staff?”_

“Security.” A thought suddenly occurred to her, one that should have occurred much earlier. “Bishop, is there a synthetic assigned to the station?”

The line was silent for a second. _“It’s Company policy to assign at least one synthetic to every facility of value. I would imagine this station meets the criteria”_

“So yes,” she said, stepping over another body. Female; the woman’s face a mask of terror, frozen forever in a scream. Ripley scooped up the woman’s security access pass from around her neck. This place was old and used antiquated systems, thankfully - no biometrics needed.

The motion detector began to click more urgently. Ahead, something was moving. “Bishop, what are those rooms in front of me?”

_“The research suites.”_

Ripley moved forward, slowly, stepping carefully around the bodies on the floor. They had been dead a while, judging from the state of them. As she advanced down the corridor, she noticed that the station hummed softly, like a spaceship, it had it’s own gentle melody that ignored the ugliness of death, of whatever had happened here.

The research suites had long, thick plexiglass windows that allowed those traversing the corridors to look in and watch the scientists at work.  Each had been covered by a shutter; some had failed to close all the way. There were six workstations that Ripley could make out through the gaps, all equipped with state of the art scientific equipment and computers. The door, also plexiglass, had been blown in from the outside; thick pebbles of glass littered the floor and crunched under her boots as Ripley entered the room.

She scanned the room, tracking from left to right. Cages, empty, some large, most small. Fridges with biohazard symbols on the frosted glass. Inside one was what appeared to be a very familiar large egg, it was open. A nearby workstation had a facehugger sitting half-dissected under a microscope, albeit a very expensive looking microscope.

The motion detector ticked a little faster. Ripley advanced through the room slowly, watching the small screen.

“Who are you?”  

Ripley looked up from the motion detector towards the unexpected voice. “I’m the cavalry,” she replied slowly, edging around towards the speaker. “You set off a distress beacon, you asked for help. Here I am.”

“You are not here to harm me?” The tone was childlike.

She wasn’t going to make any promises. “Are you the synthetic?” She didn’t trust other synthetics at all, Bishop was a special case.

“The one you speak of has gone. It said it wouldn’t leave me behind but it lies just as well as a--” The speaker stopped suddenly, as if it had been about to give away something important.

Crossing the room, Ripley cleared the line of workstations. Now she had line of sight on the speaker.

A white rabbit sat on the floor, upright, nose sniffing the air, pink eyes watching her.

“So you’re the virus then?” she asked, shocked.

“I am not,” replied the rabbit angrily. “I am a sentient alien virus in a rabbit host.”

Ripley was pretty sure her face went through several expressions the last being horror. “Somehow I didn’t expect a virus to be so cute and fluffy.”

The rabbit froze. “Get down!” it hissed. “It’s coming.”

The floor rattled and loose materials on the desks rolled and fell to the ground as something large moved down the corridor outside . The lights began to flicker, then died entirely. Ripley hit the deck and stayed there. “Bishop?” she whispered as quietly as she could manage.

 _“I see it; it’s not showing up as a life sign though,”_ he replied over comm, just as quiet. _“You might want to follow the rabbit. I don’t think confrontation is the way to go with this thing. It has weight and speed on its side.”_

Weight and speed? “What is it?” she whispered to Bishop as she crawled across the floor after the rabbit - it was moving slowly towards an exit she hadn’t noticed before. “It better not be another Queen.”

 _“Try to stay alive.”_ With a click, he went offline. He hadn’t said it _wasn’t_ a Queen.

“Follow the rabbit. Sure, why not?” Ripley gritted her teeth and eased up next to the rabbit. It looked at her then the door, a trick that Jones had used many times to get in and out of her apartment. The door opened automatically when they got to it and she checked the room beyond. Another door lay at the end. “It’s safe, move it.”

“You talk too much,” whispered the rabbit, scampering through the opening.

It opened onto a different corridor where there were no bodies and it looked relatively normal. “Which way?” she asked, not looking at the rabbit.

“Where do you want to go?” it replied uncertainly.

“Somewhere we can talk for a few minutes and where whatever that was won’t find us.” Ripley didn’t have endless patience, and whatever patience she had remaining was fast running down to zero.

The rabbit sat up on its hind legs and studied her. “Most of the humans here are unnerved by me. You don’t seem to be concerned at all.”

Ripley chuckled and took up a guard position with her pulse rifle raised, ready for anything. “That’s because I’ve seen some things that are a little more terrifying than a bunny.”

“Like what?” asked the rabbit.

“Aliens,” she replied. “Really big aliens that move fast.”

Chittering, the rabbit wriggled its nose furiously. “Well, we could move faster if you carried me. Normally I wouldn’t like it but you can travel quickly and the door sensors don’t trigger for me.”

“Are you saying you’re a little short?” Ripley joked.

The rabbit groaned. “If you are quite finished, we need to get to the security suite; the humans monitor the entire station from there, or so I’ve heard them say. I think it’s in the core.”

Following the rabbit’s directions, Ripley carried it through the station, crossing decks and going up several floors via a maintenance ladder. The door to the security suite was closed, but opened to the dead security guards access card. It locked behind them when they entered.

The room looked like it had been hastily abandoned. The view screens were set to monitor the research area they had come from, coffee cups lay half filled, a mouldy danish with a bite out of it sat next to a keyboard. Ripley swiped the danish into a bin and sat down, setting her new furry ally on the desk. Some of the screens displayed only grainy static, probably from damaged  cameras down in those sectors. “Talk to me, wabbit.”

“ _Wabbit_?” it asked, then shook its head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. My designation is Rabbit One Hundred Seventeen.”

“I can’t call you that in a hurry. Pick something shorter,” said Ripley, her eyes on the shadow of something moving through the labs. It stayed just out of the range of the cameras.

“Shorter? I don’t know what--” said the rabbit, confused.

“How about Hazel? I’m Ripley by the way.”

“Ripley.” The rabbit tilted its head at her. “I like Hazel.”

“Good.” Ripley pointed at the screen where something moved just out of view, furniture pushed aside as it made its way through the labs. “Can you see that, what is that?”

The rabbit looked at the screens and then at Ripley. “I cannot see the screens, my vision is not suited to it. What does it look like?”

Making a similar frustrated noise, Ripley answered, “Big, dark, strong. I can’t get a good look at it, it avoids the cameras.”

“Ah,” said Hazel. “That one.”

“Ah?” repeated Ripley.

“In the lab I was housed in, there were other animals, many smaller than me, but there were some large mammals and one was very large. It showed great intelligence before they used it to spawn another more dangerous animal,” Hazel grunted.

“What did it look like before? Can you describe it?” asked Ripley. “What color was it?”

“Colors are difficult, but it had stripes all over, and it had a tail that was longer than I am by several lengths.” Hazel sat upright, ears turned towards Ripley’s comm when Bishop joined the conversation.

“ _I’ve found files about the cloning of a large cat. Panthera Tigris Altaica._ ”

Ripley left out a breath slowly. “A tiger? So it was deadly before it became deadlier. Anything about Hazel here?”

“ _One of the abandoned projects involved the discovery of an alien plant found to be carrying an unusual virus. That plant matter was subsequently fed to a number of laboratory animals, entirely by accident. The employee was penalised. The scientific staff decided to study the effects, but there was no conclusive data that the virus was transmitted to the animals. They were all listed as destroyed._ ”

“Not all,” said Hazel smugly. “It simply took some time to populate enough of this host’s cells before I gained consciousness. We are now one and the same, but I form the intelligence and it the meat. For example – the rabbit craves things constantly that I have no need of, and so I feel things like hunger. I'm hungry right now".” Hazel’s large eyes fixed on Ripley with almost human intelligence. “Do you have food?”

Unwrapping one of her ration bars, Ripley broke off a piece and offered it to Hazel. The rabbit sniffed it and tried a small bite, chewing on it. “I understand that you’re a scientific experiment. I also understand you’re an alien virus in a rabbit’s body. Can I trust you, Hazel? Can you infect me?”

“I want to leave this place and I want to live through any means.” The rabbit finished the food and looked at the rest of the bar, then at Ripley. “I have tried and failed to infect other beings, so no, I don’t believe that I can infect you.”

Ripley broke off more of the ration bar, setting the chunk on the desk. Hazel ate that so quickly that she simply put the entire remainder of the  bar on the desk. Then there was a blur of movement on one of the screens. “Where is that?” Ripley asked, trying to figure out what she was looking at.

Hazel gave her a look, and Ripley got the sense that if it were human, it'd be rolling its eyes at her.

“Sorry. It looks like a corridor with numbered doors, close together. Maybe escape pods?” said Ripley.

“I didn’t leave the lab until you carried me out; I have no memory of such a place.”

A moment later one of the  pods was ejected. The exterior camera showed it shooting towards the planet at a great velocity.

“That’s not good,” said Ripley. “The big one has escaped.”

 _“Ripley, get to the airlock now!”_ Bishop’s voice suddenly came through the comm.

[Self destruct in one minute,] announced the station computer over the comm system. [Please make your way to the escape pods now.]

Ripley scooped up Hazel and ran through the station, back tracing her steps. The airlock was still sealed when she arrived. “Bishop?”

_“The ship is here. The airlock is cycling, get on-- quickly!”_

Running down the short umbilical, Ripley leapt through the door. Bishop shut it remotely behind her as she threw herself into a seat and snapped her harness shut. Hazel trembled in her arms. The drop ship fell away from the station and they were pressed back against the seat by an agonising amount of g-force Ripley mentally counted down the last few seconds till the self-destruct was to go off, then the ship shuddered as the force of the explosion rippled through it. Eventually, it levelled out.

“That was even closer than the last close one,” said Ripley grumpily.

 _“Sorry about that, Ripley. I was tracking multiple problems. The station computer managed to deceive us completely. Sulaco and I think it had basic sentience, hiding the self-destruct signal behind a wall of nonsense data it dumped through the linkup. The self-destruct was triggered some time before you arrived but after the time we signalled that we were coming.”_ Bishop sounded needlessly contrite.

“Could the synthetic have done it?” Ripley unbuckled the harness and moved to the pilot’s seat for a better view. The Sulaco grew large in the view screen. Hazel watched in what Ripley thought looked like rapt silence or utter terror. “And did you track the last pod to jettison?”

 _“Of course. It could have been triggered by any of the senior staff or the security team for that matter. It would be simple enough to do even from the colony below.”_ Bishop was a solid voice of reason. _“Speaking of which, the pod landed about a click from the colony. As shake and bakes go, it’s pretty young, so the atmosphere is hostile to life. It might take awhile to get there.”_

“The station staff must wear suits to walk on the planet, I have heard them talk about it,” agreed Hazel, looking up at Ripley. “I think it’s where the big egg came from.”

The drop ship docked and started refuelling at her request. Ripley carried the rabbit through the Sulaco and over to the hypersleep chamber. The rabbit whimpered when Bishop came into view. Bishop’s eyes widened in surprise too.

“Really Ripley, _another_ stray?”

“Not another word, Bishop.” Setting Hazel down, Ripley added, “Have we heard anything from the colony?”

“Nothing. Communication dropped out a day before the shit hit the fan on the station. Do we assume that it wasn’t the only egg?”

“Not only is it probably not the only egg, now there's an alien tiger that just crashed onto the planet and a rogue synthetic on the loose. I guess I should go down and do a quick recon.”

Both synthetic and rabbit looked at her in surprise.

“They need help. We’re still on a bug hunt.” Ripley reminded them.

“Not a bug. They put a face-hugger on a cloned tiger, I’m not sure they deserve any help.” Bishop rolled his head in her direction. “If it hits the colony, there'll be a bigger massacre than Hadley’s Hope. Assuming there’s even anyone left alive down there.”

“Well shit,” said Ripley, with a groan. “We need to do some kind of visual check.”

“There were some classified documents about another lab a few clicks out of Pandora South. That would be my first stop if I was a Company synthetic trying to stay ahead of a vicious predator. I would get to the lab and reestablish the communication uplink so I could transmit files back to Head Office.”

“I’ll give it all I’ve got, Bishop, but I made promises to Newt. If it all goes bad, I’m coming back and I’m nuking the whole damn lot of them,” replied Ripley.

 

The trip to Pandora South was rough. There were hurricane-speed winds that would have been  deadly to anyone not in a suit and temperatures in the sub-zeroes. The howling against the skin of the dropship was intimidating even for a seasoned pilot. Ripley was glad she'd checked the integrity of her borrowed USCM armored spacesuit before donning it for the trip but she realised that the winds would have picked her up and carried her away if she took a step out of the ship.

Ripley studied the colony carefully, from the pilot’s seat she had the best view of the town. There was no activity: no vehicles moving, no lights on in the windows. The place looked like it was in lockdown. “What do you think, Bishop?” she asked.

 _“Looks dead,”_ he replied over the comm.

“Okay, get me to the lab.”

Bishop piloted the dropship away from the colony towards a cube-shaped structure teetering on the edge of a canyon.

_“Ripley, I’m going to do a flyover of the canyon. There appears to be something inside it.”_

The ship banked left and flew in a slow circle over the lab and the canyon. “Well would ya look at that,” said Ripley. “Anything alive down there?”

 _“Plenty,”_ said Bishop, _“None of it good.”_

“Take me back to the Colony. I’d like to double check that there’s no one left alive before I fire any nukes. I won’t have anyone’s life on my conscience.” The ship flew lower on the return sweep, low enough for Ripley to make out a hastily written sign on the control room window.

 _“S.O.S,”_ mused Bishop. _“They must have seen us fly over earlier. I’m seeing movement in large numbers approaching from the canyon. If I set down, it’s gotta be quick.”_

Rigging the ship’s high beam searchlight, Ripley began tapping the button to turn it on and off again rapidly in sequence. “I never thought I’d have to use Morse code after basic training but I’m thankful I was paying attention that day.”

 

Ripley didn’t have to blow the terraforming facility after the dropship landed long enough for a group of weary colonists to run onto the ship wearing spacesuits.

She did blow the canyon and the lab after a quick conference with the survivors; the alien ship within was vaporised with a pinpoint  tactical nuke from the Sulaco. It would be a setback for the atmospheric plant, but not an insurmountable one. It would only take a few hundred years for the planet to be habitable again, give or take.

The nominated leader of the surviving colonists, an old codger named Tex with a faint Russian accent and fresh burns on his hands and chest, described their battle with the alien that had escaped the station. “Thing came at us, wasn’t scared of any human, we were nothing. It had blood from a lot of people on its skin. It killed three on the first night, then two more before the sun came up. Weren’t many of us left when we saw your ship fly over; then it got past the barricade.”

“Ceiling crawl  space?” Ripley asked, sympathetically.

“Ceiling crawl space,” he confirmed. “It killed Murphy and Britt as it came down out of the crawl space, ran down Benny and came at me. I was lucky though, I had my best girl, Delores,” he showed her his Bowie knife; most of the blade had melted away. “The thing, it underestimated old Tex. I sliced it right up the belly with Delores while it trying to bite me with that extra set of teeth.” He shuddered. “I rolled out of the way, fastest I ever moved in my life and it still tagged me with that acid blood. The thing melted the floor, went down into the hole screaming. We skinned out of there and waited for you to come back, lucky you did.”

 _“Ripley, a second USCM ship has entered in the system, inbound to our position ,”_ announced Bishop. _“You’ll dock with the Sulaco in a few minutes.”_

Stripping out of her spacesuit and leading the survivors to the crew lounge, Ripley spoke with each of them, listening to their stories, learning what they had lost. She held Hazel in her arms, stroking the rabbit’s fur. Hazel didn’t speak but Ripley kept reassuring the rabbit. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered repeatedly.

The synthetic blended in among the survivors easily. He shook Ripley’s hand and thanked her for saving his life. “I’m John,” he said, introducing himself. “I believe you have Company property in your possession.” He nodded at Hazel. “We will have to destroy it.”

“Oh yeah?” she replied, wiping her hand on her fatigues. “I think you’ll find that this particular rabbit is my therapy animal.” Hazel bumped Ripley’s chin with her head and trembled. “We’re old friends.”

John reached for the rabbit abruptly but Ripley stepped back and handed Hazel to Tex, who had appeared behind her at that first sign of trouble. Tex in turn handed her the pulse rifle she had set down at the table.

“It doesn’t have to go this way,” said the synthetic. “I just want the specimen.”

It came at her quickly, but Ripley knew to expect that level of speed - she remembered how fast Ash had moved when he'd tried to kill her on the Nostromo. She raised the rifle and fired a four-round burst. The explosive tipped rounds entered John’s upper torso and shredded it. Shocked, the Company synthetic looked down at the remains of it’s chest and coughed up a stream of white circulatory fluid before collapsing.

Ripley fired another burst into the synthetic. Glancing at Tex, she said, “Only way to be sure.”

“You picked on the wrong marine to mess with, robot,” said Tex to the synthetic's ruined body as he handed Hazel back to Ripley with a respectful nod of approval. “Gettin’ so you can’t tell them from real people,” he grunted in disgust.

Her comm buzzed and Bishop said, _“The other USCM ship has arrived and is requesting permission to come alongside. As ranking civilian, Ripley, it’s your call.”_

“Permission granted. Now can we just go _home_?”

 _“Copy that,”_ said Bishop.

 

“This enquiry into the events surrounding the destruction of the terraforming facility and its adjacent colony on LV-426 has convened. We are here today to consider the witness statements of the following individuals: Ellen Ripley, synthetic Lance Bishop, Corporal Dwayne Hicks, and the orphaned minor Rebecca Jordan, sole survivor of the incidents at Hadley’s Hope. For the record, Hadley's Hope was the colony on LV-426 and those incidents were an attack on the colony by the alien species designated XX121. There is also the destruction of the Pandora Scientific Space Laboratory and the attack on the Pandora South colony on LV-735 to consider.”

The voice droned on in a monotone that could only signify that the speaker was as bored with the sound of their own voice as Ripley was. She had sat through too many meetings in smoky rooms with shady bureaucrats and Weyland-Yutani middle management lately.

“May I remind you all, once again, that I had nothing to do with the deaths of _any_ the colonists on either planet nor the staff of the station. I, in fact, rescued Rebecca Jorden and _saved_ the lives of the surviving colonists of Pandora South without damaging the extremely expensive terraforming facility. It was against my own best advice that I even got drawn into going back out there, but Carter J. Burke could be extremely convincing.”

Ripley lit a cigarette and paused to give them time to process that. “He was so convincing, in fact, that he managed to keep all of his immoral actions unnoticed by, well, any of you. His instructions led _directly_ to the deaths of those one hundred and fifty-six colonists and eleven brave marines. That anyone survived at all is a credit to my ability to see through his bullshit, just like I can see through _this_ bullshit. If by the end of this meeting I don’t have my commission reinstated, guardianship of Rebecca Jorden, and the medical expenses – past and present – of Corporal Hicks paid up in full, then I’ll release everything I know to every buzzfeed in the the known universe.”

One of the women at the table sneered condescendingly. “Oh yes, and is that all? Or would you like a cherry on top as well?”

“I wouldn’t mind a ship to go with that commission,” replied Ripley with a grim smile. “I’ve still got a bill to pay off with the Company.”

“This is a load of crap,” said another faceless lawyer, his features obscured by the haze in the room. “You have nothing. We’d have heard about it by now if you did.”

“Nothing? I’ve faced down an alien Queen that wanted to wipe me out of existence and whatever it was that your staff on Pandora cobbled together from a dead alien and that poor damn tiger. A _tiger_. They’ve been extinct on Earth for more than seventy years but you just had to combine one with an unstoppable alien. I stopped them both, luckily for your precious Company, so do you think I’m afraid of you suits sitting here on your asses, chain smoking in a dark room?” Ripley sat back and stubbed out her own cigarette. “This is simple. Give me what I want and I go away. End of story.”

“We could make you go away on our terms,” said the woman feebly.

Ripley had long since convinced herself that there would be no justice for any of the dead, but she was adamant that there would be some for the survivors. “Try it. I have a lot of new friends I just saved, and you can’t make us _all_ disappear.” Ripley could feel the atmosphere in the room changing, one more push and it might be to her advantage. “Did I mention I saw the canyon on LV-735 and what was in it?”

 

A few hours later, she met Hicks, Newt, and Jones for ice cream.

“Did they go for it?” asked Hicks. “Is it done?” He looked like a different man out of uniform. Bandages still covered his burns, but he seemed glad to be out of hospital and looked better for it. He and Ripley had spent many hours talking in Gateway’s military hospital, just shooting the breeze stuff mostly. They mulled over what they wanted to do now, but also spent some time remembering the men and women in his unit; the ones he’d called family. It gave her a better memory of them than the sound of them screaming and dying; a much better memory than watching their heartbeats flatline.

Ripley took a cone from him when he offered it. Vanilla. “Not bad for non-dairy ice cream made in a vat on a station,” she said after tasting it. Then she looked over. “The Board did go for it, and it’s done. I’m a fully commissioned Warrant Officer again, and more importantly...- Newt, they said you can stay with me if you want to.”

“T-they agreed?” boggled Newt, her eyes fast filling with tears of joy. “I didn’t think they’d let me live with you. I kept waiting for someone to come and take me away again but no one did.”

“I wouldn’t have let ‘em,” said Hicks quietly, but with an edge. He was still a Colonial Marine at heart.

Ripley nodded. “Honey, they agreed to all of it. No one’s taking you anywhere.” She pulled her new daughter into a hug, wiping away Newt’s tears with gentle fingers. “Hey, it’s okay. It’s all going to be okay now. We’ll live on a ship; they’re much bigger now than they used to be, so I can have my family on board this time.” She felt a momentary pang that she hadn’t been able to have Amanda with her, but things had been different then.

“I’ve never lived on a ship before,” said Newt, a smile returning to her face. “Will Jonesy live with us?” She didn’t ask for confirmation about Hicks; she seemed to know he would go wherever Ripley went.

“Can’t have a ship without a cat on board, it’s bad luck.” Ripley crouched down to skritch Jones' small furry head. He licked her fingers, cleaning the the ice cream off.

“Now that I’m at a loose end, maybe I can tag along too? I trust you’ll provide just the right amount of excitement for to keep me entertained,” said Hicks with a slight smile. He appeared happy. Hicks stuck out his hand to help pull her up. Ripley took it, but didn’t let go when she was standing again. So they just stayed that way, and walked hand in hand for a while.

The wall beside them displayed a beautiful beach scene with white sand and a blue ocean sparkling under an azure sky. “Colony spaces available for intrepid families,” read the Weyland-Yutani banner plastered over it.

Ripley glanced at it and snorted. “Yeah, right.”

The quartet strolled slowly along the false promenade, just enjoying their time together. Jones stalked fearlessly ahead of them. For a spaceport, this one was pretty nice: it had ice cream after all. But, really, who cared? It was just a way-station in Ripley’s New Life Plan, a plan that didn’t include landing on any other uninhabited planets.

“What about a ship with a cat _and_ a rabbit?” asked Newt as they strolled towards what felt like a bright new future.

“Well that’s just _double_ good luck,” replied Ripley, smiling widely. She felt more like her old self, like the woman she'd been before LV-426 and the alien shitshow that'd followed.

Ripley felt hopeful.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from a quote in the film made by Sergeant Apone: "All right, sweethearts, what are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I *love* the Corps!"


End file.
